Note 151 — 1896 (continued 2)

Gabriel Andreevich Rusanov (1844 to 1907), friend and adherent of Tolstoi’s views; a small landowner in the province of Voronezh. Until 1884 he was a member of the Kharkov district court. In his will, among other things, he wrote the following: “Already at the age of fourteen or fifteen (now I am about fifty-seven) I ceased to be Orthodox and lived until the age of thirty-eight as an atheist. At thirty-eight, thanks to the greatest of men, Leo Tolstoi, I acquired faith in God and believed in the teaching of Christ. Tolstoi gave me happiness. I became a Christian.” For several decades G. A. Rusanov was confined to his arm-chair with an incurable disease—consumption of the spinal cord; notwithstanding his illness, he preserved his full freshness of mind up to the end of his life, reading much and being possessed of a rich memory. A splendid student in Russian and foreign literature, and noted for his extraordinary artistic instinct, Tolstoi valued his opinions, especially in regard to his own literary writings.